


A Prisoner All the Days of Your Life

by coffee_mage



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: PTSD, Prison, Trauma, masturbation (non-graphic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_mage/pseuds/coffee_mage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Young Avengers broke Tommy out of prison, but how does Tommy break the prison out of himself?</p>
<p>A look at his first day of freedom and what it means to begin to be free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Prisoner All the Days of Your Life

By the time the dust settles and the dark-haired version of himself has given him a duffel bag of clothes that fit, it’s daylight again.  He’s tired to his bones, but he’s got a whole duffel bag of clothes that aren’t just white scrubs and he’s got freedom, two things he never thought he’d see.  The hot chick with the bow, Kate, she’d given him a whole wad of money ‘for necessities’ and made up a pull out couch for him before she headed home with an apology.  Blondie the larger had gone home with doppelgänger, looking all kinds of freaked out, which Tommy supposed made sense with the whole ‘recently murdered mother’ thing, though he still thought the kid should grow up and realize parents were better gone.  They were only waiting to screw you over anyway.  Blondie the smaller had rushed home saying her parents were going to kill her, looking worried enough to prove Tommy’s theory on parents.  The darker-skinned version of Mr. Clean had said he shouldn’t make his grandparents worry, then headed out too.  That left him and robot kid and robot kid wasn’t all that talkative, so Tommy decides to go out and wander around, see the city a little.

He wanders in and out of stores, feeling totally out of synch with everyone around him, with the music playing from the speakers in the ceiling, with the colours on the clothing.  It’s not just the speed he’s moving at, either.  It’s everything.  It’s crowded, he can smell the crush of people around him and it sets him on edge.  Nothing’s actually familiar, but it’s all just close enough that he feels like it should be.  

He’s counted the wad of money by now and he’s not sure if it means that they won’t be coming back for awhile or that he’s supposed to get himself clothes and stuff.  It’s more cash than he ever remembers having in his hand before and he wanders out of three different stores before deciding that he deserves a few nice things, like shirts that don’t look like they were bought by a deranged five year old with a cartoon and comic book fetish.  If he runs out of cash, well, he’ll get Mr. Roboto to help him figure out how to feed himself.  If it comes down to it, he can steal more than enough food without getting caught.

It doesn’t take long for him to have a t-shirt for every day of the week, and boxers of his own.  His very own underpants, for the first time in a fourteen months, two weeks and five days of going commando under scratchy white scrubs and borrowed jeans.  Soft cotton that feels so nice under his fingers he almost gets a hard-on thinking about it next to his balls.  He figures the other kid’s jeans aren’t so bad, so he doesn’t bother replacing those.  There’s not enough for shoes of the quality he needs, not if he doesn’t want to be begging for food money in less than a day, so he figures he’ll make do with what he’s been loaned, and heads to a drug store for some pit stick. He has choices.  He can choose anything he wants about himself, right down to how he smells.  It almost makes him giddy. 

The drug store, he finds quickly, is overwhelming, more so than the clothing stores.  The walls are white, the fluorescent lights are too bright and everything’s in straight, neat rows.  It’s terrifying and he wants to turn around and walk out, but he won’t let himself, because if he does, the assholes win, though every instinct he’s got is screaming to just get out of there.  His breath keeps catching in his throat and every person who comes up behind him makes him jump and spin around, expecting to be caught and dragged back.  It’s all he can do to find the deodorant aisle, grab the first stick he sees, and keep himself from running to the cash too fast and giving himself away.

It’s not until he sits down on a bench, wobbly-legged, that he realizes he should have at least bought a toothbrush, but there’s no power on the planet that’s getting him to go back right now.  He can barely stand, he’s so winded, and he decides he can check a convenience store later.  He spends far longer than he’d like to think about sitting on the bench, gulping in air he didn’t realize he hadn’t been breathing before.  He feels like he’s shaking and has to check himself to make sure he’s not going to blow up the bench, that it’s just a ‘normal’ tremor.  It is, and he hates himself a little, feels sick for it.  He’s never going to escape, not really.  They’re always going to be in his head and it makes him want to dig his fingers into his own skull and rip out his brain, but if he does that, they win.  He can’t let them win, because if they win, then they got everything, every last piece of him and that cannot be.

As soon as he thinks he can stomach it, he forces himself to his feet and tells himself that no, no, it’s not them, they aren’t making him shake, he’s hungry.  He hasn’t eaten in too long, not since prison, and he’s been using his powers and he’s hungry.  That’s all it is, he’s _fine._ He’ll go find some food, circle back to the warehouse and eat.  Maybe catch some tv, surf the web on the laptop while he eats.  See what the world’s been doing while he was down and out.

He starts up the street, trying to decide what he wants.  There are just so many options.  Burgers, pizza, bad Chinese, real Chinese, Indian, fried chicken, hot dog carts, pita, salad bars.  Within a block his head is spinning from the options and he’s no closer to figuring out what he wants to eat.  He doesn’t want any of these things.  He wants all of these things.  He’s not sure.  He needs to eat something before he loses it.  He’s clearly hungry.  He’ll be okay as soon as he eats.  That’s all.  He’s got to be okay as soon as he eats, but what to eat?  Finally he decides to walk into the next restaurant he passes, no matter what it is, and order something.  Anything.  Just get something into his stomach.

It’s a pizza place he ends up in, staring at the menu.  So many toppings.  So many kinds of cheese.  The smell of pizza, real pizza makes his mouth water and he still can’t figure out what to eat when suddenly he’s at the counter and he has to order.  His mouth goes dry and it takes him a second to find his voice.  “Uh… Can I have, uh, two large of whatever’s the most popular?” he asks, voice much thinner than he wants it to be.  His first meal on the outside and he’s letting someone else pick it for him.  He’s disgusted by himself, but the surprised girl behind the counter just asks him what he’d like to drink.  He stares at her blankly for a few beats until she asks him, kindly, if he’d like to get a six pack of soda, one of each flavour.  He nods mutely and she takes his money and tells him to go wait to be called for his pizza.  

Time seems to drag on as he sits and waits, feeling suddenly worried that they’re not going to give him his pizza at all, that this is all a ruse, that they’ve recognized him, they’re going to call the police and they’ll take him back.  He’s just saved people’s lives but he’s still a criminal, still a felon, is still supposed to be in prison and they’ll come for him, won’t they?  They’ll find him, any time now and there’s not going to be a thing he can do.  He should just get up and leave, take off running before the police can get there.  

He’s actually staggering to his feet ready to do just that when the girl calls his number and he just stares at her while she smiles and beckons him over.  There they are, two large pizzas and a bag with six cans of soda.  He takes them, hating the way his hands shake as he reaches, nods his thanks, unable to speak, then goes and picks up his bags of shopping and staggers out.  He turns a corner into an alley so no one will see him disappear and blurs up to speed, taking off for the warehouse.

He’s breathing heavily when he gets there and flops into a chair to catch his breath.  He shouldn’t need to.  He’s in amazing shape.  The scientists made sure of that, running him ragged for their tests.  And yet he feels like he can’t breathe, feels like he’s been running all day.  He covers his face with one hand for a few seconds, just trying to settle.  Hungry.  Right.  That’s why he’s all kinds of weird.  The scientists had talked about blood-sugar during some of his tests, whatever that meant, so maybe concentrated sugar was a good idea.  He pulls a can of soda out of the bag at random and cracks it open, taking a long swallow.

It’s sickeningly sweet and orange.  The taste is so familiar and not quite familiar and he has to put it down before he drops it, body stiff.  It takes him several minutes before he can get shake the creeping expectation that someone’s coming to draw blood, to hold him down and take more from him, and it makes his stomach turn.  He has to breathe deeply, swallowing saliva hard to rinse his mouth in order to keep from vomiting, but he manages it.  

He pushes the soda away as soon as he can move again and opens the first box of pizza, the scent washing away the flavour of the orange soda, and his stomach settles instantly.  Pizza is safe.  Pizza is good.  He burns the roof of his mouth on the first bite, but it tastes so good he doesn’t even care.  It has flavour.  It has substance.  It’s not all in shades of brown and white with maybe a few yellow flecks of corn for variety.  He can eat until he’s full, for the first time in over a year.

Almost before he knows it, the first pizza is gone.  His stomach hurts and his abdomen is distended.  He hasn’t eaten that much food in a sitting since before his arrest, hasn’t felt full in longer than that, not since before his powers started showing themselves and, abruptly, he stands up, deciding not to feel sorry for himself, not to dwell on what came before prison.  No one needs to know and no one ever will, not so long as he lives.

He ends up wasting a few groggy hours on the internet, googling this superhero team of children that saved him.  He’s hungry again, so he eats half of the second pizza, drinking a coke with it and channel surfing.  It starts to get dark outside and it’s hard to keep his eyes open, so he changes into his new boxers and a new t-shirt.  The boxers are just as awesome as he thought they’d be and he ends up jerking off and having to change them before he crawls into bed.  It feels like a victory, to him.  His first time jerking off without anyone watching him or telling him to get it all in a cup in longer than he cares to count.  He’ll count that as a win.

He closes his eyes and waits for sleep to overtake him, but it doesn’t.  It’s too bright.  For three months, he slept with the lights on full brightness, until he started obeying, and then they gave him pitch darkness with only the underlying nausea of the inhibitor field to keep him company.  Now he can’t sleep in the light coming through the window from the sky of the city that never sleeps.  

He gets up and closes the curtains, pausing to look out before he goes to lay down again.  It’s still too bright.  He covers his eyes with the crook of his elbow and that helps for a moment.  For a moment he thinks that yes, he can sleep like this.  It’s like he can feel it, though, the dirty creeping touch of the light on his skin.  It makes no sense, of course, given that he’s not got any light receptors in his skin.  He’d _know_ if he had that kind of secondary mutation and he doesn’t.  But he can still feel the light touching him and he sits up with an aggravated grunt.  

He’s exhausted.  He’s been up more than a full day, maybe as much as two full days.  He’s gone shopping.  He’s bought himself a meal.  He’s figured out that he’s been rescued by lunatics.  And the fucking light in the window is what’s going to stop him from getting to sleep like he wants?  He doesn’t think so.  He gets up and starts peering in doors.  

There’s a storage closet not far from the little living room area they’ve got going.  He gets his blankets and makes a nest in the bottom, curling up and falling asleep within moments.

**Author's Note:**

> International readers may not recognize the Mr. Clean reference. Mr. Clean is a mascot for a brand of cleaners. [Mr. Clean](http://dljh1964.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/greenhealth_06_mrclean.jpg) is a big, burly, bald white guy with white eyebrows and an earring.
> 
> The orange pop may not make much sense to some readers, but there is a test called an oral glucose tolerance test which is used in the real world to diagnose type two diabetes and gestational diabetes and which used to be used to diagnose certain types of hypoglycaemia. For this test, you drink a sweet glucose drink, often orange flavoured, and blood tests are taken at intervals. I would imagine that, in studying Tommy's mutation, the scientists who held him would be interested in how his body metabolizes glucose, so this could easily be a test they would run on him.


End file.
